First Family
by Zarius
Summary: What has always compelled Lizzie to ultimately obey despite tireless hours of resistance? The shocking answer lies within her own bloodline (tag for 1x08)


**THE DEMON HEADMASTER**

**FIRST FAMILY**

**WRITTEN BY ZARIUS**

* * *

Ethan had done it; he had successfully tapped into the Headmaster's emergency protocols and was able to shut them down, freeing Lizzie, Tyler, Angelika and Blake's parents from the control he had over them using their tablets, computers and other devices.

But the price of victory had proved costly.

In the time he spent at the laptop within a good radius of where the Headmaster was stationed, Ethan had received visions, echoes of his past coming to undermine his present and potentially nullify his future. Visions of a police officer informing him of a truth that had been buried deep down, a secret that had been hidden to him through a beautiful lie.

The information that his parents were dead.

The truth was enough to shatter the young man where he sat, and as Lizzie and her friends made their way over to him, Lizzie's ailing mother accompanying her, Ethan could only look at his friend with the expressions of a lost and distant child, pleading for direction, insisting someone hold his hand through the dark times ahead.

Lizzie's mother also had an episode at the exact same time, the strain of being under the Headmaster's control bringing on an attack that sent her into a heap on the floor, she cradled herself and nursed her weary head as the pain and pressure became far too much to reasonably handle, though she was putting a brave face on things.

Lizzie looked towards the ominous door ahead of her in the corridor, the length it took to reach it wasn't that far, but it felt like a long trek awaited her.

Her friends pleaded for her not to advance, to find another way of healing Ethan and her mother, but she knew deep down there was no denying her attraction to the power contained within that closet.

She had felt it when this had all began hours before, back when there was stability with everyone, when Blake had the masterful idea, the very simple idea, to lock the Headmaster in the Janitor's room, a typical prank of an unruly student, but one that gave the students the freedom they craved to carve out their own rules on the school.

A rule of resistance.

But upon seeing the Headmaster trapped in there, hearing his voice, a part of Lizzie Warren felt obligated to take action, to unshackle the source of the school's authority from his chains and unleash his divine order onto the premises again. It had taken the strength of her friends to pry her away that first time, and in that moment she found herself questioning again why she had allowed herself to become so attached.

When she released the Headmaster from the closet this second time around, knowing he could make things better, she knew in the back of her mind that there was something more than just the hold over an unruly student, something more than an unnatural attraction to the strength of his presence and strict regime.

There was a sense of undisputed loyalty, as if she was meant to rely on him all her days; she couldn't quite make the connection as to why.

And then, when the Headmaster was released, and he made his way over to her mother, he let out words that cast everything in an all too clear light.

"Rose...my model student. Good to see you again"

Lizzie reeled back.

Her mother had been the poor student who had served the Headmaster in his previous life, someone he had treated oh so cruelly.

She had suspected Rose still played a part in the story that was unfolding, but she had thought she had been posing as Dinah Hunter, it would explain Dinah's swift ruthlessness the last time they had encountered her, how she was all too quick to resort to murderous tactics as a means of vanquishing this foe.

At no point did she ever consider her fragile mother to have been the victim of callous mind control, to have been used as a weapon.

That was exactly how she'd been that day though, a weapon, used against her daughter whenever it was deemed proper by the Headmaster.

And now Lizzie wondered if she had any choices left at all, she was so easily swayed by the Headmasters' control no matter how resilient or resistant to it she ultimately was.

Hers were his first family, ground zero for the grasp he would have on so many others.

They were all in his thrall.


End file.
